Your fortune 500 company pays $250-400k total compensation to young coders (2-9 yrs experience)? Which company is it? You don't? Then you're not paying more or less the same...
Really? Who does that? Bit late to figure it out now. I'm almost 40 and I make way less than that range with 20 years of embedded/hpc c++ experience. But still curious.
Google, Facebook, Netflix, Linkedin, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft etc. typically^H^H^H often pay $400-500k for someone with that much experience who can be a team lead.
If you can be a more senior architect-type person, or a manager who manages managers, 7 figures can be within reach (though not easy).
This is why you're losing coders to Silicon Valley. If you want a big house, then yeah, that will be $2M and you might be better off making $150k in the midwest. If you're happy with a two bedroom apartment for $4k-$5k/mo, there is no place better.
